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Showing posts from March, 2008

GUEST POST: Lobotomy Revisited (by Brian Carty)

The second guest post from Brian Carty of Hot Medical News , covering the... well, less-covered side of medicine! Enjoy "the history of the lobotomoy"! There's a great video that goes along with this post. Watch it here . By Brian Carty, MD, MSPH March 25, 2008 Do you remember Rosemary Kennedy, John F. Kennedy's sister? Maybe not, since she spent most of her life hidden away in an institution in the Midwest. She had a lobotomy, a brain operation for mental illness, in 1941 when she was 23. Her father, Joseph Kennedy, arranged the operation. The procedure left her mentally incapacitated. Whether she was mentally ill, mentally retarded, or both, is unclear, but her disruptive behavior led to the operation and its unfortunate outcome. She died of natural causes on January 7, 2005 at the age of 86. The lobotomy, also called leucotomy, was devised in 1935 by the Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz for the treatment of various psychiatric disorders. In this procedure, holes w...

GUEST POST: Are Ya Juicin' It? Anabolic-Androgenic Steroid Abuse

Welcome to our second guest poster on All Scrubbed Up... Brian Carty of HotMedicalNews.com . Here's an indepth look at the effect of steroids in body builders. Chilling stuff. By Brian Carty, MD, MSPH March 14, 2008 Irritable, angry, aggressive, but feeling strong and invincible, Mr. A, 32, a bodybuilder and prison guard, stopped at a convenience store to call his boss. Car trouble on the way to work.. He would be late. Bodybuilder and enhanced performance [With permission of Steve Michalik. Mr. Michalik, a former Mr. America and Mr. Universe, once used steroids and suffered as a result. He is now an energetic and outspoken opponent of steroid abuse.] Mr. A was taking his fifth cycle of anabolic-androgenic steroids (abbreviated in this article as "steroids"), and he was "stacking," combining high doses of several different steroids, sometimes referred to by the slang term "juice." The woman working at the convenience store noted his uniform an...

Have a Happy Period!

Never know whether these things are true or not. But bwhahahaha. Funny nonetheless! I'm a boy, and even I cringe at the medical marketing. This is an actual letter from an Austin woman sent to American company Proctor and Gamble regarding their feminine products. She really gets rolling after the first paragraph. It's PC Magazine's 2007 editors' choice for best webmail-award-winning letter. Dear Mr. Thatcher, I have been a loyal user of your 'Always' maxi pads for over 20 years and I appreciate many of their features. Why, without the LeakGuard Core or Dri-Weave absorbency, I'd probably never go horseback riding or salsa dancing, and I 'd certainly steer clear of running up and down the beach in tight, white shorts. But my favorite feature has to be your revolutionary Flexi-Wings. Kudos on being the only company smart enough to realize how crucial it is that maxi pads be aerodynamic. I can't tell you how safe and secure I feel each month knowing ther...

Medical Quotes #2

More quotes... Some philosphical. Some, er, not... - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Medicine is the only profession that labours incessantly to destroy the reason for its own existence. ~James Bryce, 1914 It is not a case we are treating; it is a living, palpitating, alas, too often suffering fellow creature. ~John Brown The patient does not care about your science; what he wants to know is, can you cure him? ~Martin H. Fischer Medicines heals doubts as well as diseases. ~Karl Marx A physician is obligated to consider more than a diseased organ, more even than the whole man - he must view the man in his world. ~Harvey Cushing Medicine sometimes snatches away health, sometimes gives it. ~Ovid, Tristia As it takes two to make a quarrel, so it takes two to make a disease, the microbe and its host. ~Charles V. Chapin Disease is war with the laws of our being, and all war, as a great general has said, is hell. ~Lewis G. Janes Until a physician has killed one or two he is not a physicia...

Tooth gives man his sight back

HUH? Wat die donder? 27/02/2008 21:16 - (SA). AFP Dublin - An Irishman blinded by an explosion two years ago has had his sight restored after doctors inserted his son's tooth in his eye, he said on Wednesday. Bob McNichol, 57, from County Mayo in the west of the country, lost his sight in a freak accident when red-hot liquid aluminium exploded at a re-cycling business in November 2005. "I thought that I was going to be blind for the rest of my life," McNichol told RTE state radio. After doctors in Ireland said there was nothing more they could do, McNichol heard about a miracle operation called Osteo-Odonto-Keratoprosthesis (OOKP) being performed by Dr Christopher Liu at the Sussex Eye Hospital in Brighton in England. The technique, pioneered in Italy in the 1960s, involves creating a support for an artificial cornea from the patient's own tooth and the surrounding bone. The procedure used on McNichol involved his son Robert, 23, donating a tooth, its root and part o...

Medical Quotes #1

I'm in a quotes phase. Don't know why. But found these beauts. Two part series. Original post here . - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - In nothing do men more nearly approach the gods than in giving health to men. ~Cicero My doctor is nice; every time I see him, I'm ashamed of what I think of doctors in general. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966 The greatest mistake in the treatment of diseases is that there are physicians for the body and physicians for the soul, although the two cannot be separated. ~Plato Body and soul cannot be separated for purposes of treatment, for they are one and indivisible. Sick minds must be healed as well as sick bodies. ~C. Jeff Miller In the sick room, ten cents' worth of human understanding equals ten dollars' worth of medical science. ~Martin H. Fischer It is a mathematical fact that fifty percent of all doctors graduate in the bottom half of their class. ~Author Unknown Restore a man to his health, his ...

All Scrubbed Up - Looking for contributors!

Wanna get under our blog? All Scrubbed Up is looking for contributors... Drop us a comment with your email address if you're keen to get involved with writing on South Africa's leading medical blog. Share of ad revenue to your posts - part of the package baby! We want to expand - are you it?